Need opinions about whether I should convert mailboxes.db and annotations.db to skiplist

[Thomas Arendsen Hein]

* skipmorse at gmail.com <skipmorse at gmail.com> [20100518 22:16]:
> I'm thinking about converting mailboxes.db and annotations.db to the  
> skiplist format, I've upgraded from version 2.1 Kolab to 2.2.3 and just 
> set it to use the berkley format since that's what they were in.
>
> I'ma bit paranoid that I'll end up with a corrupted annotations.db and  
> there doesn't seem to be anything about how one might 'export' that as 
> you would the mailboxes.db to a text file for backup.

Quoting myself from https://issues.kolab.org/msg21516:

| The script already exists and is downloadable from CVS:
| http://kolab.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs-kolab.cgi/*checkout*/utils/admin/kolab-mailboxinfo.pl
| 
| (call it with option -c to get input suitable for cyradm)

> I've noticed that there are scripts that will check for corruption and 
> also backup those files in case there it at some point finds any. I 
> haven't seen anything like that for the berkley format. Also, in the 
> upgrade notes, or the release notes (somewhere) I'd read that the 
> decision was made to move back to skiplist because of problems with 
> berkely, anyone know what those problems were?

Mostly locking issues with larger setups.

> So, my question, am I being paranoid or is this a valid concern (I talked 
> to someone the other day on IRC that had it happen after having to  
> hard-power off the system). I do keep about 3 days of backups of the  
> system, but I've heard it can take longer than that to see the fallout 
> from the corruption.

Yes, keeping longer backups for mailboxes.db and annotations.db is a
good idea.

> Also, any tips for the conversion? I haven't looked into the process too  
> much, but on the wiki it discusses the converstion TO berkely from  
> skiplist, so I think it would likely be similar. But, when I did the  
> upgrade, I couldn't just copy over mailboxes.db and annotations.db, I  
> needed to copy the DB folder and the DB backup folders as well, anyone  
> foresee an issue there?

This might be needed if there was an unclean shutdown of the imap
server, but usually you only need the two files.

The conversion is documented in 1st.README.

> PS Server has about 20 users, 3 group users for shared  
> calendar/contacts/folders and a handful of 'shared folders'...

With these numbers it probably does not matter if you're using
skiplist or berkeley.

Regards,
Thomas Arendsen Hein

-- 
thomas at intevation.de - http://intevation.de/~thomas/ - OpenPGP key: 0x5816791A
Intevation GmbH, Neuer Graben 17, 49074 Osnabrueck - AG Osnabrueck, HR B 18998
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner